Decentralized hedge fund Numerai to buy back $1 million in native NMR tokens as AUM tops $440 million

The Block

Jul 18, 2025 14:26:26

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Numerai, a hedge fund that utilizes crowdsourced machine learning models, has announced plans to repurchase $1 million worth of its native token, Numeraire (NMR), from the open market. The move follows notable growth in the firm’s staking ecosystem and aims to support long-term alignment among participants.

The buyback is scheduled to occur gradually, with orders placed at or near the prevailing bid prices, according to its blog post published Thursday. Numerai stated that the approach is intended to ensure transparency and avoid market disruption. Currently, $1 million worth of NMR amounts to over 110,000 tokens.

The buyback comes as Numerai reports a more than twofold increase in assets under management over the past year, growing from about $173 million to over $441 million. According to the firm, it now executes over $1 billion in monthly trading volume across more than 30 global markets, guided by predictions from a global network of data scientists.

Participants submit weekly forecasts to Numerai’s tournament and stake NMR on their model outputs. These stakes feed into the firm’s Stake-Weighted Meta Model, which aggregates submissions based on staked amounts. Numerai claims the model has consistently outperformed individual entries.

"The success of our Stake-Weighted Meta Model speaks for itself: it's outperformed every individual model over the past year," said Richard Craib, Numerai's founder and CEO. "As our AUM grows and top institutional allocators join us, the role of NMR has never been more critical."

The buyback is tied directly to the success of its staking mechanism and the scarcity of NMR, with fewer than 3 million tokens now remaining in Numerai's treasury (from a fixed supply of 11 million), according to the project.

This limited supply, combined with the expanding scale of its staking program, has raised questions about the long-term distribution of rewards. The buyback, the company said, is meant to reinforce its commitment to the ecosystem and help maintain economic balance as it scales.

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